Research Methods to Investigate Significant Life Experiences: review and recommendations

This article reviews different research approaches to understanding the significant experiences that influence people's environmental concern and behavior, with an emphasis on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of existing studies. It also reviews relevant findings regarding the validity of autobiographical memory, as memory is the medium which selects and interprets the significant events reported to researchers. The review notes promising new directions in recent studies, but makes several concrete suggestions regarding how researchers in this field can refine existing methods and broaden their approaches.     

Significant Life Experiences Revisited Once Again: Response to Vol. 5(4) 'Five Critical Commentaries on Significant Life Experience Research in Environmental Education'

This article is a commentary on commentaries: a personal response to a set of critical commentaries on significant life experience research which formed a special issue of Environmental Education Research , Vol. 5(4), November 1999, and a symposium on the same subject at the Annual Meeting 2000 of the American Educational Research Association. The journal issue and the symposium session were prepared in response to research reports and reviews of the topic of significant life experiences that were carried in Vols 4(4) and 5(2) of the journal. The article begins with a brief history of this debate. With a focus on the 'meta-commentary' to Vol. 5(4) by Stephen Gough, it then responds to a series of major and recurring points of criticism against research on this topic.     

Significant Life Experiences (SLE) Research: a view from somewhere

Significant life experiences (SLE) research has been the focus of two special issues of Environmental Education Research (EER). This article offers a possible overview of this debate, as seen front a particular academic vantage point.     

Choosing the Right Subjects in Significant Life Experiences Research

Research on significant life experiences (SLE) can achieve its potential importance only when it studies the right people for the right reason. Here I scrutinize ten research reports, and conclude that many do not. Historical information is incorporated in text and footnotes to place SLE research into the intellectual history of contemporary environmental education.     

Significant Life Experiences Affecting the Environmental Sensitivity of El Salvadoran Environmental Professionals

The purpose of the study was to investigate which life experiences were perceived by El Salvadoran environmental professionals as being instrumental in the development of their environmental sensitivity. The study was an attempt to replicate Peterson's 1982 sensitivity research by using her interview format and questionnaire. Peterson's Environmental Sensitivity Profile Instrument was translated into Spanish for this purpose. A life experience profile for an El Salvadoran environmental professional was constructed from the participants’ demographic and interview data. The profile was used to identify any patterns in life experiences involved in the development of environmental sensitivity.     

Role of Significant Life Experiences in Building Environmental Knowledge and Behavior Among Middle School Students

Significant life experience research suggests that the presence of role models, time outdoors, and nature-related media foster pro-environmental behavior, but most research is qualitative. Based on a random sample of middle school students in North Carolina, USA, we found limited positive associations between presence of a role model and time outdoors with behavior and a negative association between watching nature television and environmental knowledge. The strongest predictors of environmental knowledge and behavior were student/teacher ratio and county income levels, respectively. We also found that Native Americans engaged in environmental behaviors more than Caucasians, and that African American and Hispanic students had lower levels of environmental knowledge. Accordingly, life experiences appear less important than promoting small class sizes and addressing challenges associated with lower incomes in schools.     

Goethe's Faust Revisited: Lessons from DIT research

The argument is made that psychometric forms of assessment are essential to the large-scale adoption of developmental approaches to moral education. In this respect, the Defining Issues Test has been an invaluable tool for research and practice in moral education. However, because such instruments are based upon previous developmental research, they are by definition derivative and unsuited for basic research on moral development. In addition standardised measures, while essential to educational research on the correlates of moral growth, run the risk of reifying extant views and assumptions about morality and moral development. Thus, such measures may stand in the way of generating new knowledge and/or impeding the assimilation of alternative conceptions of morality and social development within educational research and practice. To avoid these problems, while at the same time benefiting from the utility of measures such as the DIT, requires a constant reciprocal interaction between the generation of standardised measures and basic developmental research.     

Describing individual incidents of sexual abuse: a review of research on the effects of multiple sources of information on children's reports

OBJECTIVE: For successful prosecution of child sexual abuse, children are often required to provide reports about individual, alleged incidents. Although verbally or mentally rehearsing memory of an incident can strengthen memories, children's report of individual incidents can also be contaminated when they experience other events related to the individual incidents (e.g., informal interviews, dreams of the incident) and/or when they have similar, repeated experiences of an incident, as in cases of multiple abuse. METHOD: Research is reviewed on the positive and negative effects of these related experiences on the length, accuracy, and structure of children's reports of a particular incident. RESULTS: Children's memories of a particular incident can be strengthened when exposed to information that does not contradict what they have experienced, thus promoting accurate recall and resistance to false, suggestive influences. When the encountered information differs from children's experiences of the target incident, however, children can become confused between their experiences-they may remember the content but not the source of their experiences. CONCLUSIONS: We discuss the implications of this research for interviewing children in sexual abuse investigations and provide a set of research-based recommendations for investigative interviewers.     

Significant life experiences affect environmental action: a confirmation study in eastern Taiwan

Two field studies form the basis of this article. The major purposes of Study 1 were to examine significant life experiences affecting the cultivation of environmental activists in eastern Taiwan, and to reconstruct the life paths followed by those active people who engaged in effective environmental action. 40 usable autobiographical memories were collected and content‐analysed to derive 17 significant life experiences. Based on the 17 accounts, a quantitative questionnaire of 24 items on significant life experiences variables was developed for Study 2. Four hundred and thirty valid questionnaires were analysed. Eighty two respondents with a high level of environmental action were determined to be environmental activists, and 153 with a low level of environmental action were determined to be people apathetic towards environmental protection. It was found that the significant life experiences identified in Study 1 could effectively distinguish environmentally committed people from those apathetic to environmental protection. Study 2 also found that 54.6% of the variances in environmental actions could be explained by the significant life experiences.     

Significant signs: a case study of citation practices in educational research

Citations have a central role in the dynamic process of knowledge development and as measures of research performance – yet little is known about their role in educational research or the qualities they are assumed to measure. Based on a citation context analysis, this study shows how a paradigmatic reference within classroom research has been used in 90 articles in educational research journals. Four types of content and four citation functions were identified in the immediate context of the citation symbols. Surprisingly, no critical citations or discussions of the validity of the cited study were found. The results are discussed in relation to the conditions for communication within a field without disciplinary cohesion.     

Spillover effects in environmental behaviors,across time and context: a review and research agenda

When implementing environmental education and interventions to promote one pro-environmental behavior, it is seldom asked if and how non-target pro-environmental behaviors are affected. The spillover effect proposes that engaging in one behavior affects the probability of engagement or disengaging in a second behavior. Therefore, the positive spillover effect predicts that interventions targeting one specific behavioral have the capacity to promote non-targeted and/or future pro-environmental behaviors. However, the negative spillover effect predicts that engaging in a first pro-environmental behavior will prevent or decrease a second pro-environmental behavior. Since the theoretical and empirical basis for positive and negative spillover effects are not sufficiently understood, the present paper (1) suggests a distinction between behavioral, temporal, and contextual spillovers (2) reviews the existing spillover research literature across a variety of environmental domains, (3) presents potential moderators governing the direction of spillover effects, and finally (4) discuss techniques to promote pro-environmental spillovers.     

Growing up in a tourist destination: developing an environmental sensitivity

Abstract

This paper explores how the socio-cultural milieu of a community may foster a sense of environmental stewardship among children and young people. Ethnographic fieldwork, carried out in a popular tourist destination in Australia, revealed that the overt impacts of tourism activity such as littering provoke negative feelings among children and young people; these perceptions can in turn translate into a sensitivity towards the environment. While debated in some circles, a Significant Life Experiences (SLE) lens is useful in understanding children and young people’s lived experiences of – and sensitivity to - environmental issues in the communities where they are raised. SLE is employed in this article to explore how a sense of stewardship towards the environment is developed among children and young people growing up in a tourist destination. Findings suggest they actively contribute to protecting the environment in a variety of ways from regular beach clean ups and educating visiting tourists to participating in rallies and anti-development protests.     

论屈原对生命价值的体认

在对生命意识进一步觉醒的基础上,屈原的生命价值主要表现在他的思想主张上,即忠君爱国、关注民生和重视修身等三个方面。     

人生经验与历史学者的悟性——史学方法谈

一个学者的人生经验对于他所从事的学术是否有帮助？我们可以根据人生经历与学术成就的相关度,把所有的学科划分为三类,第一类是一个人的人生经验对于他所从事的学科来说完全不重要,第二类是比较重要,或有一定的相关性,第三类是非常重要.     

Describing individual incidents of sexual abuse: a review of research on the effects of multiple sources of information on children’s reports

Objective: For successful prosecution of child sexual abuse, children are often required to provide reports about individual, alleged incidents. Although verbally or mentally rehearsing memory of an incident can strengthen memories, children’s report of individual incidents can also be contaminated when they experience other events related to the individual incidents (e.g., informal interviews, dreams of the incident) and/or when they have similar, repeated experiences of an incident, as in cases of multiple abuse.Method: Research is reviewed on the positive and negative effects of these related experiences on the length, accuracy, and structure of children’s reports of a particular incident.Results: Children’s memories of a particular incident can be strengthened when exposed to information that does not contradict what they have experienced, thus promoting accurate recall and resistance to false, suggestive influences. When the encountered information differs from children’s experiences of the target incident, however, children can become confused between their experiences—they may remember the content but not the source of their experiences.Conclusions: We discuss the implications of this research for interviewing children in sexual abuse investigations and provide a set of research-based recommendations for investigative interviewers.